In this Child Health Research Center, the applicants propose to create skilled pediatric scientists focused on the broad field of developmental biology by taking advantage of an experienced senior faculty committed to that field within The children's Hospital, and by providing opportunities for laboratory experience with a large associate faculty drawn from within and without The Children's Hospital. The date physician scientists will be drawn from the fellowship pool within The children's Hospital, a group that is, in turn, drawn both from the resident program the hospital and from a large pool of applicants who apply to the hospital for fellowship from other residency programs. Particular attention will be paid in this center to women and minorities who are underrepresented within the hospital's training program, and particularly within its junior and senior laboratory research faculty. A formal program of minority recruitment closely associated with that of the Harvard Medical School will be employed to ensure that capable minorities are recruited and successfully established in laboratory careers. The purpose of this program is to ensure that, over a five year period, a strong group of pediatrician scientists, capable of successfully applying for Markey Scholarships, FIRST Awards and Clinician-Scientists Awards, will emerge, and that they will subsequently compete successfully for individual research grants from the National Institutes of Health. The facilities necessary to develop this program are based in general within the new research expansion of The Children's Hospital which houses a large number of highly experienced investigators, and is particularly-focused in a core laboratory to be built within the Laboratory of Developmental Biology on the ninth floor of this new facility. The core laboratory will provide the young scholars in the Child Health Research Center important opportunities to master the techniques that are associated with modern developmental biology. In addition, the Child Health Research Center will be assisted by the research facilities of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Children's Hospital, and by the highly experienced associate faculty at Children's Hospital, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard University Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Cancer Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Whitehead Institute.